Tech Tip: Getting Started with Spring Boot

In principal, the easiest way to get started is to just reuse somebody else's handcrafted build file and project setup. There are code-generators that make this easy. The Node-ecosystem tool yo offers a code-generator called generator-jhipster. The projects generated with JHipster are web applications built using Maven, Spring, and Angular.js. The Groovy-language ecosystem codegenerator Lazy Bones can code-generate Spring Boot applications for you, as well.

For me, nothing beats the Spring Initializr. It's simply a small form that's pre-filled out with useful values. You might make sure to specify Java 1.8, and check the boxes for Web, JPA (or any of the other supported data-access technologies like MongoDB), and Actuator. This is a safe first-application. Once you've specified your Java revision (you are on Java 1.8, aren't you?), specify the type of project you'd like. Many people will know what to do with the default, a Maven Project. This will be importable into any IDE, straight-Eclipse, IntelliJ (Community or Ultimate), NetBeans, etc. I'd leave the version ( - the latest stable release) and the project type set to the defaults. Click Generate to download a an archive. Unzip it and then import it into your favorite IDE as a Maven project.

If you're using our open-source Eclipse distribution Spring Tool Suite (STS), there are many ways to get started. We base STS on the latest-and-greatest cut of the Eclipse Java EE distribution, so it represents a stable, well-integrated distibution of Eclipse. The Spring Tool Suite provides extra tools and niceties. One such nicety is a dialog within the IDE that acts as a front for the Spring Initializr. It's nice skipping the download, unzip, and import steps!

The spring.io guides provide easy-to-digest introductions to using Spring (or Spring ecosystem technologies). Each guide is backed by a Github repository that demonstrates the finished project as well as provides a base template that you can fill out when completing the guide. There's a nice feature in STS that lets you import a Getting Started guide directly from the IDE, by going to File -> New -> Import Spring Getting Started Content. This saves you the git clone, and IDE-import.